Does Philosophy tend to ruin one's quality of life?

Maybe cranky. (Oops I need 20 characters)

I think more important, is there a way through it? I think there can be. What your path through might be is something that you have to find by walking it. How important are the questions you are asking? What would it matter if the outside world did not exist? If there is only your internal life, then how are you to live it?

Our ability to ask a question does not mean that it is an important questions or that it has an answer. You say:

This reminds me of something Wittgenstein said:

“The real discovery is the one which enables me to stop doing philosophy when I want to. The one that gives philosophy peace, so that it is no longer tormented by questions which bring itself into question.”

Of course this raises more questions: How does one stop? Is stopping and finding peace from the torment of questions the same thing? Why is bringing philosophy into question a problem if one wants to stop doing philosophy?

What you expect to find in answering these questions? Perhaps your search is misguided. Rather than looking for external answers the inquiry should be turned around. Perhaps Socrates was right. Your orientation should be on the examined life.

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For me, I find that the common path is comfortable; but exactly this wellness makes me sick. You can either deal with the tough questions now to be truly happy later; or be superficially happy now by suppressing it until it becomes too much to bear in your older years.

The only real way forward is through: I promise you that if you stick with philosophy it will get easier and much less stressful.

Heh - ah, that I can grok lol

OK. I know you are clever but perhaps not so very wise about any expectations of what constitutes the ‘smart’ thing or person?
What is it that you feel you need. Not what others (who?) feel is expected of you.
You talk of ‘now’ (compared to past) and how everything ‘feels’.
There are so many life moments (however, you feel about quantity or quality) that there is bound to be changing feelings and thoughts.

What is it you would like to happen? Is philosophy, for you, no longer a ‘love’.
Apparently, it is your perpetual, philosophically analytical nature that is broken or destructive?
Am I correct?

In addition to mental concerns of compulsion and apparent need to please others - have you considered that this could be an important part of the thinking process. To be helpful, rather than harmful - to be a ‘new’ or different you.
Or is that something - a different way of looking at life - a natural change or process - anathema to what you think you need?

The mind is powerful and it can be flexible. If your current story of self is stuck in an unhelpful loop, you are the author. Is it possible to imagine a change in the narrative — I think. up to a point, this is what brings quality to life. Imagination and creativity.

People might want to say that they can read you like a book. You are smart/not smart or caring/uncaring. Or any of the either/or’s.

What and how people or philosophers read and interpret aspects of an individual or life - how often do they vary, or even change their minds.

A book, once fascinatingly full of
bright ideas, is now dull or not ‘you’ anymore. It doesn’t ‘fit’ the growing you. It doesn’t ‘become’ you. Once, it may have been enjoyed but tastes change. Does this mean that the quality of life has been ‘ruined’?

Perhaps, in a way — there is a sense of innocence lost — but what has been gained by the changes. It depends. According to the story. The genre of your life?

Spot the pattern of some philosophers — what issues appeal, to them or you. How do you interpret? Does it matter, if you read ‘right’? What if it is not what the philosopher intended? More questions?

Yes, it can be a hellish entanglement. To find the ‘answer’, if it is even there.

It can be an unfolding mystery and myth. Make of ‘philosophy’ what you will.

Take a break when the challenges are too much. When you might feel like giving up — ‘What does it matter?’ — so many wonder that.

OK, I’ve spent more time writing than I expected. Thanks for the questions and discussion.
Now it’s time for something else. :sunny:

Another potentially helpful reply:

Perhaps that is what this discussion is allowing us to do? Not only for @DarkNeos —

Indeed. It depends on what we need or want to know. What might help us in developing a ‘quality’ of life. Or not.
Some consider questions of decision-making either ‘trivial’ or ‘genuine’. I am not convinced of the options given in ‘The Will to Believe’ by William James. (April’s TPF RG). Another story…

All good questions and a Wittgenstein quote to boot! ( just what not everyone wants :slight_smile: )
Indulge my curiosity? Do you have a context or source for this?

How did philosophy help you? Re quality of life or anything else? Profession or practice?

If I like quotes, meditations or aphorisms, am I still a kid?

Perhaps, in a way — I think they can be funny as well as ‘deep’. Often contradictory but very human, with humour. Sense and sensibility?

Three or four word ‘sound-bites’ can express — more or less — a speaker’s political philosophy. How it can provoke either/or positions. Catching.

Quotes can initiate thought, question and provide inspiration. An entry point, a momentary glimpse into someone else’s world as they see it. Then and there. Reasons for reading?

I don’t care much for prolonged analytical discussions concerning Wittgenstein.

A long time ago, I remember loving his ambiguous duck/rabbit image. I immediately understood it. So clear, the picture of changing perception and interpretation.

Who needs to look further? Well, plenty…

Anyway, from Ludwig Wittgenstein - Wikiquote, an album of snapshots, including this:

In philosophy one feels forced to look at a concept in a certain way. What I do is suggest, or even invent, other ways of looking at it. I suggest possibilities of which you had not previously thought. You thought that there was one possibility, or only two at most. But I made you think of others. Furthermore, I made you see that it was absurd to expect the concept to conform to those narrow possibilities. Thus your mental cramp is relieved, and you are free to look around the field of use of the expression and to describe the different kinds of uses of it.

  • Lectures of 1946 - 1947, as quoted in Ludwig Wittgenstein : A Memoir (1966) by Norman Malcolm, p. 43

I don’t know if this is right or not. Again, my love was for Marcus Aurelius in some of his meditations about self and change. Perhaps my view has changed…but they worked for me at the time. And I think, the core ones still do…

Time to revisit?

If you mean the quote, it is from Philosophical Investigations 133.

All of what follows is probably to a greater or lesser degree a story I am telling myself and you. For me it came with a turning away from naive thoughts about the problems of the world and toward self-knowledge. I had to begin with myself. With an evaluation of what I did and what I thought, and the willingness to change when it seemed appropriate. I came to put questions rather than answers first. This included questioning the questioner and his questions. Becoming comfortable with not knowing, with not having answers. Early on, however, under the influence of Plato, I believed that there were answers, that philosophy is about finding those answers. I think that is a good way for an immature, and in my case somewhat rebellious, person to begin.

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The original question was about philosophy simply: whether it ruins one’s quality of life. But I think both the question and the answers that followed have largely assumed something more narrow than philosophy simply. Specifically, they have assumed that modern philosophy is the only kind of philosophy.

Of course a lot can be said about the differences between ancient and modern philosophy, including among other things, Aristotle’s view that philosophy was a part of human flourishing in line with the highest activity of a virtuous soul. Those kinds of specific teachings aside, I do find that ancient philosophy tends toward a vision of an ordered whole which is understood to have purpose, whereas modern philosophy tends toward a vision of chaos and arbitrary materials flying about. And even if it can be said that these materials proceed according to some rhyme and reason, at any rate they cannot be said to belong to any larger system of purpose.

I generally do that with everything I read, I internalize it as 100% true.

What you’re describing is real and it’s more common than you might think. Philosophy can genuinely unsettle people, and the fact that it’s unsettling you means you’re taking it seriously, which is to your credit even though it doesn’t feel that way right now.

The ideas troubling you are serious ideas. They aren’t nonsense. But I think what’s happening is that you’re encountering them as conclusions without having had the chance to work through the arguments carefully, and that’s a recipe for anxiety. When you read that someone “proved” solipsism is true, or that anti-natalism follows from certain premises, you’re getting the punchline without the setup. And the punchline sounds devastating when you don’t have the tools to evaluate the argument that produced it.

Philosophy is important precisely because it gives you those tools. The same tradition that produced solipsism also produced devastating critiques of solipsism. The same tradition that raised the problem of other minds also showed why the problem is far less threatening than it first appears. Anti-natalism is a position with serious objections that most ethicists find compelling. The claim that everything is a social construct is one of the most contested claims in philosophy, not a settled result.

What you’re experiencing isn’t philosophy doing its job. It’s philosophy half-done. You’ve encountered the problems without the responses, the objections, the counter-arguments, the centuries of careful thinking that have gone into showing why these positions are far less secure than they look when you first meet them.

My honest suggestion would be to keep reading, not less. But read the responses, not just the provocations. And if the anxiety is affecting your sleep and daily life, talking to someone about it isn’t a sign of weakness. It’s a reasonable response to genuine distress.

I already answered that, see my above posts. As for through? No. I’ve been spinning my wheels for 25 years. I take everything cryptic as some mystic wisdom. Like this reply in a thread I made:

“You” don’t actually exist in the world. Your consciousness does not exist in the world. The world does not exist in the world."

And my brain has been obsessing over what it means and since the person won’t reply back I’m spinning over and over trying to figure it out rather than leave it alone.

Socrates was wrong, the examined life doesn’t go anywhere in my experience. All it does it undo everything you care about, including you. It doesn’t build anything.

Well no, I’m not. The truth is I don’t really care about this stuff, but I have no choice in the matter.

But it doesn’t give me those tools. The problem with solipsism is that there is no devastating critiques of it, that’s why it’s called the hard problem. There is no definitive way of refuting it.

The claim that everything is a social construct isn’t contested. IT’s pretty much established fact. The stuff we humans value: gender, sports, money, etc, it’s all constructed by us.

Keep reading is the cause of the problems. That’s terrible advice.

I have encountered the responses, that’s why it’s still a problem. The counter claims to the issues I listed are, sadly, weaker than the actual argument.

Like the more I read the more wearly my mind gets because I don’t have answers to any of it.